The Landlord port model adopted for port concessioning  in Nigeria took a centre stage at the just concluded 8th Pan African Port Cooperation (PAPC) Conference in Arusha, Tanzania, as hundreds of the delegates extolled the hard-wearing efforts of the management of Nigerian Ports Authority (NPA).

The commendations followed immediately after a presentation on the challenges facing port operations in Africa by the leader of Nigerian delegation, Chief Christopher Abiodun Borha’ Chief Borha who is also the General Manager, Corporate Services and Strategic Planning of the NPA told the Conference that it took a focused management of NPA coupled with a strong political will of the Government of Nigeria to concession the ports to private operators.

He further said that today Nigeria is experiencing buoyancy in terms of revenue returns, increase in turnaround of vessels and reduced time of towage.

Chief Borha said that apart from winning back most importers, who deserted the ports before the regime of port reforms, the Authority now operates the best model port devoid of pilfering and container poaching that was the bane of the ports before concession.

He however remarked that all the fortunes were coming after they had made a costly sacrifice of human capital.
“To get our ports right today we paid a high price of human capital. We pruned down the workforce from 14,000 to 4,000 staff.

He expressed surprise that while the port reform was a success in Nigeria it was a failure in Ghana.

“In our own case, we got a good advice and with the backing of the powers that be, we went ahead and implemented the reforms and today we are all happy for”, remarked Chief Borha.

He opined that that Africa has now become a focal area in the economic development and consequently the port development, saying it is necessary to develop new infrastructure, improve efficiency and raise overall port performance, adding that at the same time, it is imperative for the ports to consider externalities of their activities, typically environment and safety and security of logistics.”